


Only in a World of Speculation

by in_a_different_box_to_you



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - High School, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderqueer Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-14 14:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3413399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_a_different_box_to_you/pseuds/in_a_different_box_to_you
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joanna Watson can no longer afford to Attend St Barts academy so she moves the the larger establishment across the road, a school that is famed for accepting difficult cases. Filled with unstable geniuses and vengeful members of the collapsing aristocracy, Joanna will spend her last years at school in a place that is a far cry from safe, consorting with people who are involved in a dangerous coverup hidden behind the jovial exterior of the pretentious elite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I began writing this when I was in France over the February break and was trying to avoid doing homework. I achieved in this, so I am going to count it as a success. Basically this is the setting the scene chapter.  
> We are working under the assumption that everyone is in the Scottish educational system, because I find the English one very hard to understand. Joanna and Victor are in 5th year, which makes them fifteen, sixteen or, at a stretch, seventeen. In Scotland this is the second last year of school and when we take our highers, the main qualifications to get into uni. Sherlock is in the year below, but takes classes with them.   
> If anyone finds anything in this fic offensive, which I really tried to avoid, I apologies and will rectify it.  
> Please comment, I like constructive criticism so I can avoid boring my friends with checking over a fic about a paring none of them are interested in.

_Wednesday the 24th of August, 15:02_

Joanna sat on a plastic chair in the school office and micro-analysed the photographs pinned onto a display board in boredom, looking behind her out the glass doors and at the clock as it ticked past three, obsessively, until her neck began to ache.

“Joanna?” She turned to see a figure standing in the doorway, their short hair falling away from their eyes as they squinted up from the paper they had been reading. Joanna inclined her head and the person smiled, walking forwards and offering a hand, which was surprisingly cold and firm. “Victor, Victor Trevor.” Male then? He had very feminine features, she had only refrained from recognising him as a girl because of his thin hips and the suit blazer he wore over a yellow woollen jumper and blue shirt.

“Hi.” She was pretty sure that this was a girl’s school, however her previous schools had all been coed, so she didn’t understand the system. Maybe they made exceptions.

Victor scanned her with an unnervingly pleasant smile. “You don’t have much stuff, do you?” He took her case before she could lift it herself and then looked down at the paper again as he crossed the quadrangle. Joanna trotted beside him, totally disorientated. “Right. You are in Bach - that’s the North East turret - second floor, room 21, God help you.” He swung round a corner onto a spiral staircase. “Here.”

Joanna took the steps two at a time in order to catch up. “Bach?”

“Baroque composers. Bach for science and mathematics. I am in Vivaldi, for English and the arts.”

Joanna’s brain caught up with the conversation. “You said-”

Victor stopped and turned around so that she stumbled. “You are rooming with Sherlock Holmes,” He said with something that seemed like resignation, as if this should mean something. After looking at her bemused face for a second, he raised his eyebrows. “I see that, for once, her reputation has not preceded her.”

“Reputation?” He turned away with a slightly bitter smile. “I expect you will find out.”

Joanna felt her breathing become more laboured by what she thought was the third landing. “I thought it was on the second floor?”

“First three floors are classrooms, top two are dorms. The teachers have the fourth turret.”

“Oh God.” Victor laughed, “You get used to the stairs.” He staggered through a doorway into a large round room. “Here we are. This is your breakfast room.” He dragged her case around the tables, through a doorway and into another stairway. “Come on.” The passage opened into an identically shaped room above, only this one had walls formed by glass panels and heavy curtains reaching from the high ceiling. Armchairs clumped around the fireplace and the occasional table. “This is your common room, through there is your library,” He gestured towards a shadowy alcove as he crossed the room, “and through here,” he held the door open for her, “is the dormitories.” They slipped down the corridor, passed rows of doors on either side until the end of the hallway. Victor turned and grinned, knocked and then swung through the door behind him. “Number 21.”

“-not open that door unless you are Victor.” The owner of the voice scowled when she saw Victor’s companion. The girl had an almost shoulder length tangle of curls and pale blue eyes that looked far too old for her youthful face.

“Sherlock, this is Joanna, your new room mate.” Victor smirked.

“You tricked me.”

He snorted. “It was too easy. You need to work on that."

Sherlock slid from her seat on the window ledge, her eyes X-raying Joanna coldly. “Swap with her.”

“What?”

Sherlock’s eyes flicked back to Victor. “No one would notice. I’m not having a stranger in my room, especially one who intends to fight for ‘ _Queen and Country_ ,’” She finished with a sneer.

Joanna’s brow furrowed and she looked between them. “How did you-?”

“Sherlock, she has obviously been placed in this room for a reason.” Victor dragged Joanna’s suitcase towards one of the beds. It was hard to tell which was Sherlock’s: they where both equally buried in debris.

“By idiots. What do idiots know?”

Victor raised his eyebrows at her whining tone. “Not enough to be comfortable putting us in the same room.”

Sherlock placed a hand on his arm.“Victor-”

“Just don’t kill her, Sherlock.” He narrowed his eyes and gave her a slight push so that she had to step back. “I need to go and see Mr Andrews.” He smirked at Sherlock’s wounded expression, glanced at the bed and then gave Joanna a look of condolence. “Joanna, I will be back in about an hour. Get settled in, alright? I’ll come and help you organise your timetable and everything then.” He vanished from the room.

*

_15:18_

“So.” Joanna stared down at what appeared to be some orphaned parrot feathers, a cricket bat and a pair of ski goggles on her pillow. “Um.” She turned, fixed a smile and met Sherlock’s cold stare. “Hi.”

The other girl returned to her prior preoccupation that seemed to predominantly consist of glowering at other students out of the window. “Go and unpack your first aid kit, let me imagine for a moment that you hadn’t blown any chance of Victor staying with me.”

Joanna did a double take. “How do you do that?”

Sherlock let out a resigned sigh and turned back into the room. “Think about it. You want to be a doctor, you must be moderately intelligent.”

“Yeah, thanks-”

She dropped back onto the floor, crossed the room and began to sift through the clutter on top of the chest of drawers. “Are you thinking? Have you thought about it?”

“I don’t-”

She turned, holding four test tubes containing sludge of varying viscosity in a rack. “You’re in Bach, so you are studying the sciences. You have changed schools, previously you were at St Bart’s Academy which produces, almost exclusively, medical students-”

“How did you-?”

“Your blazer.” She replied in a long suffering voice, as if Joanna should have made this connection. “Your cuffs are worn, suggesting it is second hand, however the stitching around the emblem is new. Around the edge you can see the holes from where a larger logo has been unpicked. So this is the blazer you wore at your previous school. Bart’s is the only other establishment in the close vicinity with a blue uniform and its emblem is an oak tree with unnecessarily huge text reading ‘Nil Obset.’ You obviously could no longer afford the fees there, or your scholarship was cancelled, so you changed to here because it offers extensive financial support.

“As for the army, you have a leaflet for the cadets in your side pocket. Normally students are recruited in second year and it takes a long time to be accepted by the group. You know this: there is a cadet force at Bart’s. Yet you are planning on joining in higher year. You have circled the date in red. The secretaries in the office all use red biros, so you asked for the pen. This extent of commitment to joining up suggests that you wish to continue in the forces as a career. It is not as if your sister would have recommended you join, she prefers to waste her time behind the hockey pavilion, drinking.” She stopped to breath.

“My sister?”

Sherlock rolled her eyes. “You look identical. It’s bad enough trying to identify individual homo sapiens without familial resemblance.”

“But - well, that was amazing.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, really… incredible.”

“That’s not what people normally say.”

“What do people normally say?”

“Piss off.”

Joanna began to laugh at the ludicrously of everything and Sherlock, surprised, joined in with a low chuckle. Joanna perched on the bed and smirked, “Even Victor?”

“Shut up.” Sherlock scowled, but her eyes smiled.

“So, um, Victor?”

“What?”

“Is… he, I mean…” She trailed off.

Sherlock’s mouth twisted for a moment. “Victor answers to male pronouns most of the time, but he doesn’t really care.”

“O… kay.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t.”

“What?”

“Act like it’s odd. He hates that.”

Sherlock leapt across to her desk and brushed the surface clear with one arm as she set up some chemistry equipment. Joanna deduced that the conversation was over and began to declutter her bed, stacking the random paraphernalia over the invisible line that marked Sherlock’s half of the dorm. She spent a long time replacing Sherlock’s stuff with her own so that there was soon a mountain range of clobber dividing the floor.

*

_16:21_

“Joanna?” She turned from where she was trying to wedge her case under the bed to see Victor in the doorway.

“Hi.”

Sherlock did not look up from where she had been silently immersed in her experiment for the past hour. “Victor, fetch me some ginger hairs.”

“Do it yourself.” Victor peered over her shoulder and flicked the back of her head. He smirked and turned back to Joanna as Sherlock rubbed her scalp and grimaced. “We need to sign you up for some extracurricular activities and see what interest classes you can fit between your subjects.” He crouched down so that he was talking into in Sherlock’s ear, with one side of his face pressed into her curls. “Sherlock, please don’t let anyone notice you cutting their hair off, I will inevitably get the blame.”

“But you handle it beautifully.” Sherlock muttered.

“I’m not your handler, despite what everyone seems to think.” Victor straightened up.

She spun around in her criminal mastermind chair like a child after their first expresso. “I wouldn’t have anyone else.”

“Thanks. Bare that in mind before you get me expelled.” He ruffled her hair and then bounded towards the door with a gesture for Joanna to follow.

*

_Thursday the 25th of August, 5:39_

Joanna was woken by the mournful wailing of a violin. She opened her eyes to a window that was in a wall ninety degrees from where it had been yesterday morning. Staring out at flood lit lawns split by an avenue of plane trees, she gradually realised that home was on the opposite side of the city and six weeks away and that Sherlock Holmes had woken her before the sun had risen.

“Fuck.”

“How eloquent. You’re right though, it does need some work.”

“Sherlock, I couldn’t really care less right now if your music could rival fucking Bach’s, just shut up.” She rolled over so that her face was pressed into the pillow.

“Alright, no need to use Our Lord’s name in vain. I have been told I play exceptionally well but maybe-” Joanna groaned with the effort of lifting her head and glowered at Sherlock.

*

_08:27_

Joanna stumbled down the stairs to chemistry and thanked whomever build this godforsaken place that she didn’t have to go up them in the morning. Sherlock had vanished by the time Joanna had woken for the second time, however she found a note reading ‘To find set 2 chemistry: exit room, turn left, walk forwards, open door, slalom around chairs, open door at south west, walk down three flights of stairs, open door, turn left, open door, find empty seat - not beside overlarge nose and greasy brown hair - SH’ blu tacked to the door.

She found the classroom, spotted ‘overlarge nose’ and, to be safe, plonked her bag on the desk next to a black haired girl with wire glasses. The girl turned and gave Joanna a braced smile. “Hi, I’m Michele.”

“Joanna.” Michele waited until Joanna had unpacked her folder and shoved her bag between her legs before starting a conversation with excessive enthusiasm. “Where was your last school?”

She felt her pockets distractedly for a pen. “St Barts.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah, I want to be a doctor.”

“Me too. Are you applying for the medic insight course then?”

She looked up, surprised. “I thought I might.”

“Apparently the exam is a killer. I’ve been trying to revise but my room mate is fond of blaring punk rock twenty-four-seven. Who’s yours?”

“Room mate? Sherlock Holmes.”

“Oh my God, Really?” Michele gasped.

Joanna raised her eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Well its just…” She trailed off. “She’s never had to share her room before, but they are having to make cuts, what with the fire and everything.”

“Fire?”

“Yeah, in one of the labs. It’s having to be almost completely rebuilt. We should have been in there this year. Apparently there was an experiment that went wrong. Strange, though - there wasn’t a class in there at a time so no one got hurt. The lab was empty.”

“Maybe someone came in from outside.”

“It was an explosion, they would have been killed. Might have been, though, if the body was incinerated.”

Unease prickled up Joanna’s neck. She shook her head slightly and said, weekly, “It doesn’t say all this in the brochure.”

Michele grinned, looking slightly relieved at the subject change. “I take it you’ve met Victor then.”

“Yes.” Apparently Sherlock and Victor came very much as a set. “Why?”

“No, it’s just, well, _I_ wouldn’t like to get between those two.”

“So are they, like, together?”

“Well, yeah.” Michele snorted. “I would have thought that was obvious. I mean, I can’t imagine Sherlock sleeping with anyone, but I recon they are ‘romantically involved.’”

Thinking back, Sherlock’s attitude made more sense. “She was pretty annoyed when Victor refused to swap rooms with me.”

“Yeah, well, the teachers try to keep Victor with Sherlock as much as possible - it’s safer that way - but the governors are obsessed with the house system and won’t make an exception.”

“Safer?”

“Sherlock can be a bit,” She looked up a the ceiling for a moment, “dramatic.”

Joanna smirked. “Should I be worried?”

Michele chuckled loudly then looked around awkwardly. “Probably, but there’s not much you can do to protect yourself from a couple of geniuses.”

“Victor?” Joanna failed to see the pleasant, if slightly pretentious person she had met as an unstable brainiac in the way she was beginning to recognise Sherlock.

“‘Look like the innocent flower, be the serpent under it.’ - Macbeth”

“But he seems so… friendly.”

“We recon he’s a spy.”

“For whom?” She crinkled her brow doubtfully.

“Sherlock or his brother, the Government… It fits.”

“But surely then he would try to, you know, blend in, no matter what the cost.” Thinking about Victor’s dress sense and alternative gender identity, Michele’s wild theory made absolutely no sense.

“He’s ‘so overt he’s covert,’” At Joanna’s raised eyebrows Michele added “- A Game of Shadows,” unnecessarily.

“Right.” Joanna looked away to hide her smirk.

*

_13:14_

When Joanna made it up the stairs from the refectory, panting, to english, she was relieved to catch Victor’s eye at the back of the room. She slid in beside him as the bell rang. “I have met a lot of people who are under the impression that you are a member of the secret service.”

Victor cocked his head and grinned. “Good afternoon to you too.”

Joanna smirked. “Are you?”

“I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.” He deadpanned, shifting his books off her desk. “Besides, aren’t you the more likely suspect?”

“If I was a spy I would be able to afford a new blazer.” She replied, slightly bitterly.

“Touché.” He gestured to their class' novel, “Have you read it then?”

Not looking as she riffled through her bag, Joanna asked, “What, ‘Remains of the day’?”

“I thought it was an impressive statement on English society.”

Joanna suppressed an eye-roll. “‘Course you did.”

“What?” Victor grinned, which suggested that he was exaggerating his ‘teenage intellectual’ act to irritate her.

“Nothing.” Joanna looked around. “I just feel like I have been plunged into a farm for future Oxbridge graduates.”

Victor snorted. “I doubt that half the people here will progress very far after everything stops getting handed to them on a plate.”

“Old boy network?”

“Quite. When you run a school that accepts ‘difficult cases,’ you have to take the occasional bribe to let the thicker ones in. They may talk as if they will some day win the Nobel Peace Prize, however most of them just have fathers who are still living off money from the slave trade.”

She thought back to her conversation with Michele. “Apparently you’re a genius.”

He gave her a strange look that slowly changed into a mysterious smile. “When Sherlock Holmes choses to associate with someone, they gain many labels.” He watched her, assessing, and then smirked. “You will probably be the prime minister with a hip flask full of polyjuice potion by the end of the week.” He stared thoughtfully into the distance. “I wrote a novel, suddenly I had a girlfriend and a small business completing students essays for them.”

Joanna grinned. “So not that great a result then?”

“Well, I could afford to move out of my families crabby flat and buy my own studio, so not all bad.”

“Must have been some book.”

“It was rather pathetic, actually. I think my later works demonstrate greater skill in the plot structure.”

Joanna gaped at him as their teacher, Mr Andrews, addressed the class.

*

_13:36(ish - Why do people care so much about a meaningless human construct like time anyway?)_

Sherlock skipped english in favour of smoking at the back of the stands, watching a group of pupils jog around the playing fields in a bout of enthusiasm for life that usually lasted until eight am on the second morning of term. She reviewed what she had conned the ‘Watson Dilemma.’ The reactants required for the creation of hydrogen cyanide sat on the back left corner of her desk, under a coverless copy of the bible and a spilt packet of toothpicks. So far she had only concocted the poison in her mind palace, however having a stranger in her room was stretching her patience. At lunch, Victor had advised her, in that reasonable voice that she _hated_ , to ‘just change Joanna’s status from stranger to friend,’ to which Sherlock had replied ‘I don’t have friends.’ He had rolled his eyes, amended ‘acquaintance then’ and force fed her one of his vegan cupcakes, which invariably tasted like cardboard sprinkled with iron fibres.

She recited the lesson she was missing word for word in her head to pass the time before it ended, taking deep drags on the cigarette and rolling the nape of her neck across a steal horizontal that formed part of the back wall of the stands. A deep scuff mark halfway down the steps told her of a fight that had broken out approximately two months ago, judging by the extent of the corrosion, between someone large, maybe around 6 foot, and a smaller person, whose head had been scraped across the metal, going by the angle and curvature of the groove. It hadn’t been there when she had sat here two weeks before the holidays.

She considered a more hands on approach against Watson for milliseconds before dismissing any courses of action that would come under this heading. Violence was too messy, too crude, and too difficult to cover up afterwards. Sherlock mentally walked towards her desk, reached out past the rumpled pages of the bible and pricked her hand on one of the toothpicks. Maybe Victor’s plan was best. Watson was tolerable, when she wasn’t asking inept questions and it wasn’t as if Sherlock hadn’t had less worthy acquaintances before.

Shadows shifted behind the windows of the main building, signalling the ringing of the bell in the quad. Sherlock stood, dropped the cigarette, kicked it through a crack between two steps, swung her bag over her shoulder, bound down to ground level and vaulted the railing onto the grass. The degree of sponginess in the field spoke of rain in the past hour, which she had missed in her preoccupation. She stepped lightly so that the moisture did not make its way to her socks. Cold drops speckled her face as she ducked into the pend. The quad was empty - there was no need for anyone to exit the turrets between classes - so Sherlock’s return would go unnoticed.

-But then Sherlock met two tearful eyes, drenched in diluted mascara. Clara Simone, 18, relation status - apparently newly single, ex-girlfriend - Harriet Watson. Two bleeding slits, fourteen millimetres apart, pierced Simone’s forehead - the front two studs of a football boot. She turned her pitiful eyes away when she recognised Sherlock Holmes and choked in dismay - seen by the weirdo who sees everything, soon her breakup would be the talk of the school.

Sherlock rejoined the flood of students on the stairs and allowed herself to be swept up to mathematics. Her lip curled when her eyes found Joanna Watson seated in what had been Sherlock’s place for the past two years. She refused to be riled by anything as irrelevant as the teacher’s seating plan however, and took the only available seat, beside Watson.

“Hello.” My God, why did she always sound so _joyful_. Sherlock grunted in reply and upended her bag onto the desk. She scraped all her other books back into it and let it thump onto the floor before piling ‘Heinemann Advanced Higher Mathematics,’ her graphics calculator and single pen at the back right corner of the table. Watson was watching her in amusement. Her sense of humour was as incomprehensible to Sherlock as Phillis Anderson’s mental capacity, or lack of it. Watson tilted her head to peer at the textbook in a way that was clearly invasive. “How come you’re studying advanced higher?”

“Because I do not possess the IQ of an orange.”

“Right, I am starting to see the socially deficient genius thing everyone’s been going on about.”

“You began the conversation, I replied to the question. If you are offended so easily then I suggest you join a alcoholics anonymous where everyone will praise you and tell you they’re ‘proud of you, _Joanna_.’”

Watson gave Sherlock a ridiculously understanding expression. She understood nothing. “Have you ever been to an AA meeting?”

“It was an excellent opportunity to observe people.” That squashed her delusions.

“It’s just, well, I think they’re really helping my sister.”

“Really? Then why is she roaming the corridors in a drunken rage, having assaulted her room mate with a football boot?”

“Fuck.” Sherlock stared as Watson leapt up, shouted something incomprehensible at the teacher and disappeared from the room. The entire class followed her with their eyes and then turned around to look at Sherlock. A few people laughed nervously. She shrugged, _not my fault, not this time_. She found this as difficult to credit as they did. The teacher began to recite the higher course as if another ‘Sherlock Fiasco’ had not just occurred. Sherlock opened her book and buried herself in a world where the figures behaved logically and not according to the ratio of a combination of proteins in the brain.

When Watson returned, she was breathing heavily, her eye was purple and swollen and the rest her face was red with- Ah. _Rage_ Sherlock could understand. Mrs Withers (Wilson?) faltered in her rhetoric, before deciding that pastoral care wasn’t her area and proving that the line of gradient negative two was perpendicular to that of one half. Watson sat back down and said, “Thank you,” without a trace of sarcasm.

“What?”

“I said, thank you.”

The bell rang and Watson vanished into the crowd.


	2. Chapter 2

_Friday the 11th of September, 8.17_

Joanna was finding it more and more difficult to get up in the morning, what with wrestling with her sisters psyche every evening in an attempt to try and prevent another night of violence followed by sorrow and unconsciousness. Joanna spent her breaks trying to persuade the headmaster to not to give up on Harriet. Without school, the prospect of university verged on the impossible. Their parents sent letters with naive reassurances and ignorant suggestions that were starting to make Joanna scream internally hours after reading them. 

Sherlock could analyse their mental state and environment from the note paper, but was an intellectual void in terms of advice. She lacked the social competence to deal with anything outside of her alien family. Victor, ever reasonable, gave Joanna a brief on her sister’s psychological state, in his professional opinion, but he had never actually had to contend with anything _real._ Michele Stamford, unlike the others, did not feel like it was her place to comment, which was pretty useless in terms of sorting this mess. 

 Joanna was trying to concentrate solely on her school work during class, but it was hard because not everyone was so dedicated. She had gone from social butterfly at her old school to the quiet geek at this one. 

 The old laboratory had been renovated in time to be in use about two weeks into term. Sherlock left another post-it note on their dorm door in the morning with instructions on how to get to it. It was a surprise, she never gave the impression, in person, that she cared. 

 Joanna stumbled groggily down to the bottom floor after trying to do something about her swollen eye that really hadn’t worked. The loud noise in the stairwell assaulted her and she decided it really was _too_ early. Room 124 had the look of one of the ‘looks twenty, is actually one-hundred-and-four’ skin care success stories. Ancient brickwork crumbled behind thin sterile plaster walls and the feint whiff of smoke clung to the corners. The pupils sat uncomfortably along two benches, subdued in the unfamiliar and eery environment. Joanna joined them at one end, where Michele had made an obvious attempt to seem like two people and save her a space. 

“Sleep well?”

Joanna gave her a look. It roughly translated as ‘do not be happy in my presence.’

Ever oblivious, Michele erupted into an in depth commentary on last night’s ‘bake-off’ episode and Joanna doodled a couple of rockets on the inside of her folder. The teacher’s words went completely over her head and she barely notice the appearance of distillation apparatus beside every sink. 

Then the rancid stink of rotting flesh invaded the classroom. Silence fell amongst the students and Mrs Simpson hurried around to the back bench, where a brown liquid was filling the condenser from the sink. “Phillis, try your tap.” Overlarge nose leaned over to the sink in front of her and twisted the tap on. The smell thickened in the air and a thick stream the colour of dark blood splashed into the plughole. The class recoiled. 

Mrs Simpson walked purposefully around to the front of the room, instructed them to ‘leave everything where it is, and go outside,’ before collapsing over a pile of ‘Bright Red’ revision guides. 

In the resulting chaos, someone managed to get hold of matron, and the teacher was removed. The pupils, predicting an impending apocalypse, grabbed their most valuable possessions, namely their mobile phones, and legged it. They got as far as the playground, where they stopped, scanned the sky for carriers of nuclear weapons, sobered and looked for an internet reception. 

Joanna felt vaguely irritated that one of the rockets would remain without a fire propulsion stream thing and ambled back up to her dormitory with the intention of doing some maths revision. 

Opening the door, she blinked. Sherlock lay on her back, hands buried in Victors hair. He was sprawled over her, his face pressed into her collarbone. They were both laughing, sunlight flickering across their entwined legs. “-And then he said ‘my intellectual prowess was a gift and should not be exploited on a whim.’” Sherlock let out a breathy laugh.

“Prat.” Victor’s shoulders shook and, leaning over, Sherlock pressed her mouth and nose into his hair. Their smiles faded as they registered the creak of the hinges. She looked up and he rolled awkwardly over to face Joanna on his back. Sherlock’s arms remained in the air as a look of loathing formed on her features. Joanna slowly turned away. Victor, clambering off Sherlock, thankfully fully clothed, made his way towards the door, face concerned and one arm reaching out a placating hand, saying, “Joanna-” 

She took the stairs too at the time on the way back down, seeing grey and not looking where she was going, and collided with Michele. The girl was gasping with breath, her eyes wide.

“They’ve found a body.”

 

*

_12.42_

A janitor had been sent down to investigate the secondary water supply underneath the chemistry block. He returned above ground and vomited across the lid of a bin. The police, who had cautioned off the entire department, took his statement and then told the headmaster that there had been a discovery of parts of a ‘decaying cadaver.’ Apparently they had found that part of the tank had been blown away by the explosion and the person, suspected arsonist, had been almost totally incinerated, apart from the burning remains of a leg which had landed in the water. There was to be an enquiry into why no one had investigated below the laboratory, especially during its refurbishment. The workers had been paid to complete the job _fast._ It seemed like the impossible deadline they had been set had lead to them to cut corners. The leg had floated there, festering for weeks, so that the entirety of the plumbing for the lab was washed in rancid liquid.  

Joanna listened with no more than a vague interest to the wild conspiracy theories that Michele broadcasted across the school. She was more worried about running into Sherlock and Victor. So far Joanna had avoided the former, however, when Victor shifted his bag off the neighbouring seat at lunch, she couldn’t exactly ignore him. 

She sat down and stared at the stained tabletop. “I’m sorry, it’s just it looked a bit _intimate_ and I couldn’t cope.” 

“It’s okay, I understand.” She looked up and caught Victor’s slight smile before it faded. “Sherlock is angry, she feels like you’re…” He avoided her eye, “Like you’re preventing her from seeing me. It’s irrational and damned annoying, but, well, Sherlock hasn’t had a lot of love. In the holidays she becomes accustomed to spending the whole time together, its hard to adjust to being back here.”

“I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t.” Victor said sternly. “You have nothing to apologise for. Now, what’s your theory on the corpse in the laboratory? Sounds very Cluedonian, doesn’t it?”

“Would have thought that would be more Sherlock’s area.”

“Hmm… While the genius is otherwise occupied, do you think the remains where that of an unfortunate victim, or a vengeful pyromaniac?”

“Or they are a red herring.” To Joanna’s confusion, Victor looked at the ceiling and chuckled slightly. “What?”

“Nothing.” The smile remained, “Yes, maybe someone planted the leg.”

“Why not?”

“No, maybe someone did. They would have to have burnt a body and then somehow smuggled it down there, knowing the workmen would neglect to visit the subterranean levels.”

“Unless they planted it before, knowing that it would be blown to smithereens, or immediately after.”

“Sure.” Victor agreed. He picked at his mushroom stew with a plastic fork before giving up and tossing it into the bin.

“Starving children in Africa?”

“You are eating a the shredded remains of a genetically modified chicken who spent its life in a thirty centimetre squared cage being force fed grain,” he pointed out. Joanna looked down at her tray and quickly lost her appetite.

“So, the veganism?”

“Hmmm?”

“Not trying to convert your girlfriend?”

His nose crinkled. “Oh God, don’t call Sherlock that in front of her. And yes, I am.”

“’S’it working?”

“Veganism implies that you do not eat things that once had a consciousness. So, in the fact that Sherlock doesn’t eat anything, I’d say its working.”

“Eating disorder?”

“Maybe. Its exhausting trying to make her, but I don’t think she cares.” He sighed. “It took, well…” He swore underneath his breath and looked away so that she could not see his face. She stared at the back of his head. “Um, I’ll see you in English, yeah?”

“Yeah.” 

He swung his bag over his shoulder and left, leaving her confused and lonely. She didn’t want to be left with the desperate Michele Stamford as her only friend. With this whole thing with Victor and Sherlock, she felt like someone had offered her a different universe, but she had proven unworthy and the offer had been withdrawn. It was pretty bloody heartbreaking, as Victor would say in his bloody elite english accent. 

 

*

 

_21.49_

Joanna left returning to the dormitory until she could find no other reasonable way to kill time. As she swung open the door Sherlock’s shoulders stiffened from where she was hunched over the desk. 

“Look…” Joanna removed a starfish from her bed, replaced it in the tank by the window and then flopped down backwards across the duvet. “I have to live with you so this would be a lot easier if-”

“If what?” Sherlock spat from directly above her. “If I didn’t behave like a ‘ _freak_ ’? If I didn’t ‘display my _sick perversions_ in front of normal people’?”

“What?” Joanna shook her head.

“You! You fucking goldfish. You just wish everyone was rattling around in their primitive brains asking ‘what’s for tea’ and ‘Oh My God that guy is so hot!’ I’ve seen you, cozying up to everyone, adopting their ‘like’ this and ‘like’ that whilst saying - _nothing_. Like white noise - high pitched, meaningless and fucking irritating. Rather than actually living reality, because in case you hadn’t noticed, we are all fucking dying from the moment we are torn kicking and screaming into this _stupid_ universe.” Sherlock threw herself backwards, missed the bed and her head collided with the wall so hard that there was a hollow clunk.

“Are you okay?” Joanna tried to suppress a laugh.

“Not really, no.”

She sniggered and Sherlock glared at her, trying to stand up with dignity and without falling over. She managed to curl up on the bed, facing the wall. 

“I was going to say ‘-if you didn’t overreact about everything,’ which is a bit ironic, now.” 

“I have quite an advanced mental capacity, Joanna, I can recognise irony.” She replied dryly after a few seconds. 

“Good.” Joanna smirked, “We’re alright then.”

A “Hmm…” came moments later from the back of Sherlock’s head. 

“Night.” Joanna singsonged cheerfully. There was no reply. 

 

*

 

_Saturday the 12th of September, 11.24_

They spent the morning lying around in Vivaldi’s common room as the rain lashed the windows. Sherlock lay draped over the sofa by the fireplace, where a few crisp packets smouldered pathetically, her head in Victor’s lap. She was not very comfortable, with the fabric of his jeans scrapping the side of her face and his laptop balanced on her head, but one of his hands stroked through her curls and the intimacy was… nice. 

Joanna slumped in the armchair opposite them, pointedly looking completely unfazed with their position, whilst struggling with basic integration, having misguidedly asked Victor for help, which lead to a tirade on the pointlessness of mathematics and a pleasant vibration behind Sherlock’s head. “Sherlock can help you, though.” Victor nudged her and she groaned.

“I am not battling with her menial consciousness. Sorry, Joanna, but tutoring is really not my area.” Victor’s hand disappeared from her hair. She whined. “Alright, fine. Whatever.” and ordered Watson to hold the question paper in front of her eyes. The next half hour passed in mind numbing boredom, not helped by Victor fidgeting as he ‘lost all feeling in his legs.’

 A parade of artistic types traipsed back and forth, the occasional music student rehearsing in the corner. Sherlock preferred Vivaldi’s turret to Bach’s. This was mostly due to the fact that Victor lived in Vivaldi, but also because the people here accepted the ‘weirdos.’ Many were self absorbed and largely minded their own business, mainly because of the large narcissist community that congregated in the creative world. 

Silence fell as everyone turned towards the door. Two suited men had entered the room. DI - 49, estranged wife, recently given up smoking, mid argument with DS - 41, married, ongoing affair with a colleague, low IQ. “Is there a Victor Laura Trevor here?” The DI looked grave - _Christ._ Victor stilled and placed her laptop on the coffee table.

“Laura?” Watson hissed, trying not to laugh. Her maturity seemed to be conditional. _Goldfish_. 

He stared helplessly at Sherlock’s face, murmuring in reply, “My parents didn’t change my middle name.” _As if that was relevant, as if Victor should have to remember the hole in his identity_ now, _of all times._

She stood, facing the men, hand Victor’s shoulder in an attempt to prevent him from standing, asking, “What do you want with him?” Like she didn’t know, like this wasn’t the first thread to come loose in their carefully crafted web. 

“We just have a few questions for Mr Trevor.” 

“Sherlock, it’s alright.” Victor struggled upright and placed a hand against her cheek. “Everything will be okay.”

“No-” 

“Sherlock, just-” He stretched up to her ear and whispered, “Do what we said. _Everything_ will be alright.” 

“Victor!” My God, he never _fucking_ listens. You would think he would, what with ‘the whole genius thing.’  _“Hypocrite,” h_ is subconscious told him. _Thank you subconscious, that’s just_ fantastic. 

“My name is Inspector Lestrade, this is Detective Sergeant Anderson, this shouldn’t take long.” DI took hold of Victor’s upper arm to lead him towards the door. 

Sherlock bristled. “Do not touch him.” 

DI gestured to his college, let go of Victor and approached Sherlock. “Look, Mr Trevor - _Victor_ isn’t a suspect, we just think he might have seen something, something he might want to get of his chest.”

“Oh, please.” Sherlock spat. “Do not patronise me, _Detective Inspector._ I know you people, it’s not about the truth - just getting another case to add to a list of triumphs.”

“We have a main suspect. Victor is simply being questioned as a potential witness.” Lestrade followed Anderson from the room. The door swung closed behind them. Sherlock swore and thumped the wall. 

People shuffled awkwardly from the room.The blow had frustratingly little impact on the plaster but her hand throbbed so she cursed again. Joanna placed her hand on Sherlock’s shoulder and lead Sherlock silently back to Bach’s turret. 

 


End file.
